IRELAND AND POLAND.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 28 March 1918, Page 3

IRELAND AND POLAND.

A COMPARISON

BY T. W. ROLLESTON (First Hon. Secretary of the Irish

Literary Society, London)

LAND REFORM (Continued).

That magic has been worked for Ireland by the British Legislature and by British credit. As in Prussia, compulsory powers (limited by certain conditions and to certain districts) stand behind the schemes of the Government; but the compulsion is exercised not against the Irishman in favour of the English settler, but against the (usually) English landlord in favour of the Irish tenant. The State is now pledged to about £130,000,000 foi the furtherance of this scheme, the instalments and sinking fund to the amount of about £5,000,000 a year being paid with exemplary regularily by the farmers who have taken advantage of it.

THE CONGESTED DISTRICTS BOARD.

In the poorer and more backward regions of the West it has been felt that these measures are not enough, and a special agency has been constituted with very wide powers to help the Western farmer, and not only the farmer, but the fisherman, the weaver, or anyone pursuing a productive occupation there, to make the most of his resources and to develop his industry in the best possible way. This Board commands a statutory endowment of £231,000 a year. A system of light railways which now covers these remote districts has given new and valuable facilities for the marketing of fish and every kind of produce.

The various Boards and other agencies by which these measures are carried into execution are manned almost exclusively by Irishmen.

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER,

There is a world of difference between the present lot of the Irish agricultural labourer and his condition in 1883, when reform in this department, was first taken in hand. Cottages can now be provided by the Rural District Councils and let at nominal rents. Nearly nine million sterling have been voted for this purpose at low interest, with sinking fund, and up to the present date 47,000 cottages have been built, each with its plot of land, while several' thousand more are sanctioned.

Of the results of the Labourers' Act a recent observer writes : —

" The Irish agricultural labourer can now obtain a cottage with three rooms, a piggery, and garden allotment of an acre or half an acre, and for this he is charged a rent of one or two shillings a week. . . . These cottages by the wayside give a hopeful aspect to the country, flowers are before the doors of the new cotages and creepers upon the walls. The labourer can keep pigs, poultry, and a goat, and grow his potatoes and vegetables in his garden allotment."

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

In 1898 a Local Government Bill was passed for Ireland which placed the administration of the poor law and other lo ( cal affairs for rural districts on the same footing as in England. The rule of the Grand Juries, which had lasted for two and a half centuries, and which had, on the whole, carried on looal affairs with credit and success, was now entirely swept' away, and elected bodies were plaoed in full control of local taxation, administration and patronage, In the case of the larger towns free municipal institutions had al ready existed for some sixty years. In these the franchise was now reduced, and is wide enough both in town and country to admit every olass of the population. Since 1899 the new elective bodies have had s important duties to fulfill in regard to development of agriculture and technical instruction.

[Continued in next issue.]